Jim Nelson: Earth to Earth 2.0

Why aren’t we all talking about the "Earth Twin"? That’s the only thing anybody should be talking about. That’s all you’re allowed to talk about at my house. If you come over and you have something nice to say about the Earth Twin, you can stay. But if you start going on about Obamacare enrollment numbers or "Twitter stress" or the weird way Oscar Pistorius cries, all high-pitched and sad like Claire Danes, you’re out.

Because all those stories pale next to the discovery of Earth Twin. Never heard of her? She and the red-dwarf star around which she orbits are brand-spanking-new to our galactic understanding. Her tongue-tripping technical name, which we will not be using in this article, is Kepler-186f (zzzzz...), named for the NASA telescopic experiment that scooped her from cosmic obscurity. But science geeks are calling her Earth 2.0.

Here’s all that matters: She is the closest thing scientists have ever found to a planet that resembles Earth and our incredibly sexy living conditions. Or as one of the main researchers described her, in plain un-geek-like language, she’s "the first definitive Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone around another star." This is what’s known as the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too Venus, not too Mars. Important words here include definitive, Earth-sized, and yes, the holy-shit part: habitable!

Let me explicate more about Earth Twin, as best one can from the picture emerging. She’s beautiful and buttery, with a thick, insulating atmosphere. She likely has forests, lakes, mountains. Might she have photosynthesis? Hell yeah! Gravity conditions? Similar to the ones Sandra Bullock face-planted into at the end of Gravity. Which is to say, Earth-like. "You could far more easily imagine someone being able to go there and walk around on the surface," said a dude on the research team I would like to have walk a little bit in front of me when we visit the planet.

At any other time of our existence, this would be huge, huge news, the sort you could call earthshaking and still feel like you’re selling it short. And yet: It didn’t even make the front page of the Times. It trended not. These days we’re bored by outer space. We’re interested in looking in, not out. Our minds and media have gone micro. We’re too busy watching the Oscar Pistorius Trial channel (this actually exists!) or Instagramming the ramps and pea shoots of our diet.

(Me, I’m as lame as the next lamestreamer. I no longer eat solid food, not since I discovered Delectable, the magical app that allows you to upload photos of the wine you’re drinking and humblebrag about it with other lushes. It is like Grindr for alcoholics. Last night I spent three hours on it. Who needs new planets when you can discover new apps?)

What’s crazy about all this is that we’re living in, and largely ignoring, an epic age of space discovery. Maybe the reason this doesn’t top Fox Friends every day or break through our daily consciousness is because the revelations truly stagger the mind, and the immediacy feels, well, light-years away. (Earth Twin: 500 light-years from Houston.) But think about how quickly the technology changes, how the language of possibility ticks ever upward. Let China and Japan fight over a few uninhabited islands. Do you know how many new planets Kepler has discovered in the last few years? Nine hundred and sixty-six, bitches! Thousands more are still being investigated for their planetary chops.

Here’s what I like. This is all breaking at a time when conservative mistrust of science and an exalted belief in creationism run higher than ever. To me, Kepler is a godsend. It points the way to a future where all our cultural battle lines begin to seem silly. Because you have to wonder: How will fundamentalists, who believe in one holy apostolic Earth, begin to change their Story when ever-more earthshaking discoveries complicate it?

You can see signs that it’s beginning to happen—evangelicals starting to talk about space, which is super-weird. Of course, so far they’re doing it in bombastic, biblical ways. The other day ancient oracle and giant-forehead owner Pat Robertson spoke of the apocalypse in Avengers-like ways. "I don’t see anything else that fulfills the prophetic words of Jesus Christ other than an asteroid strike," he said. "There isn’t anything that will cause the seas to roil, that will cause the skies to darken, the moon and the sun not to give their light" except "a big ol’ hunk of space rock." And then he started riffing on how Jupiter is our cosmic savior. It was a refreshing take on Revelations! Anyway, forgive him. He’s working out a new cosmology. But it will definitely end violently.

I’m no Nostradamus, but I did go to Notre Dame, which is almost the same thing. And I can tell you, religiously and scientifically, that all of this will happen. Earths 3.0 and 4.0 will be discovered. We will visit Earth Twin. And evangelicals will one day repent for crushing science. But that is light-years away.

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